It figures: now that I’m living in Canada and earning US dollars, the exchange rate between the two hits its worst level in my lifetime.

Still, I’m not complaining too loudly: I did pay off my student loans while the exchange rate was near the historically best levels (circa 1999). Complaining that the exchange rate is poor is like complaining about the weather: you can’t do much about it, unless you’re willing to move… and it’ll probably change by the end of the week anyway.

Microsoft is going to set up shop in Vancouver. One of the reasons for doing so is the more favorable immigration policy in Canada:

The Vancouver area is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft�s corporate offices in Redmond and allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S.

This is a good thing for Vancouver and Canada, a big win for those who favor relaxed immigration policies (such as myself), and a big slap in the face for those in favor of tighter immigration controls — both for economic and homeland-security reasons.

There are smart & talented people all over the world. Those people may not be able to do the work they want to do in their home countries for a variety of economic and political reasons. Many of those people aren’t allowed to work in the U.S. due to the American love-hate relationship with immigration; this practice will allow them to work in a similar (better?) environment. While they do that, they’ll draw a salary (which is largely made up of U.S. money) and spend most of that within Canada (on taxes and domestic purchases).

Microsoft is showing that it’s not just trying to lobby for an H1B cap increase (as many have claimed): they’re serious enough about a real problem to take some actions outside the realm of the U.S. Government. The message to the American closed-border crowd is very clear: current policy is detrimental to business, and if it’s not corrected the U.S.A. will be loose out in the long run.

There are some goods and services that, for various reasons, you just can’t get in Canada: warm weather in January, pictures of yourself hugging Mickey Mouse, a view of the Mona Lisa. If you want those, you have to travel to some other place.

You can also add doctor-assisted suicide to that list. Unlike the others though, getting that service will get your loved ones questioned by police… and, if the lobbyists have their way, arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.

This service is obviously in demand (Sue Rodriguez made big headlines for weeks back when I was in high school). There’s some very sound ethical arguments for allowing it. But the laws in Canada don’t allow for it, potentially to the point of prosecuting those who seek the service off of Canadian soil.

Something else to note: by forcing assisted-suicide seekers to foreign countries, you in turn:

• Limit its availability to those who can afford the travel expenses.
• Limit its availability to those who can physically make the trip — thus forcing a life-or-death decision earlier than would otherwise be required.

I don’t think that that serves much purpose.

As of yesterday I’ve been back living in Canada for one year. Over all it’s really good to be back.

The most notable improvements, in my experience, are:

1. The friendliness and competency of the average stranger (the people you meet on the street, on the road, at the check-out, and at the customer service call center).
2. The general positive attitude of the people.
3. The lack of social/cultural/political division and conflict.
4. Affinity for nature, expressed through outdoor activity and concern for the environment.
5. The number of days with pleasant weather.
6. Not having to jump through hoops to appease the immigration police.
7. The unopressiveness of the health care system. We’re getting better care thusfar without the high premiums and threat of bankruptcy-inducing medical bills.

The most notable declines:

1. The lack of access to good online retailers.
2. Worse restaurants overall.
3. Fewer options for air travel.

I’ll note that a lot of this is regional (Calgary vs. Ft. Lauderdale) rather than national (Canada vs. USA), but a lot of it does apply elsewhere in both cases.

We’re both very happy to be here.

My aunt and Laura and I went to see The Yeomen of the Guard at the Pumphouse Theatre last night. For a small community-theatreish production, it was performed really well, and we all enjoyed it.

A bit of humor occurred during the intermission, when a member of the theatre group announced that the next production the group was doing was the play No Sex Please, We’re British… to which he embarrassingly added “and, uh, we’ll leave that one right there”.

I snickered. “No Sex Talk Please, We’re Canadian.”

Calgary, where I now live, is the cleaneset city in the world.

Well, at least out of the 215 surveyed. I know firsthand that there’s more smog in Calgary in the summer than there is in say Saskatoon (the city where I grew up). Obviously not ever city in the world could be included. Still, that’s pretty impressive.

Vancouver is the best overall city in Canada and tied for third in the world (with Vienna, behind Zurich and Geneva). Calgary came in at 24 worldwide behind the Canadian cities Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. I haven’t seen the actual report yet to analyze further; all the third-party reports I’ve seen quoted the winters as being negative factors in the Canadian cities’ ratings (and thus Vancouver’s high score).

The differences aren’t severe. With New York serving as the base of 100 points, Calgary scored 103.6, Toronto 105.4, and Zurich 108.1. Baghdad, the worst city, got 14.5… so what’s 8 points among friends?

Lastly, the linked article took an obligatory pot-shot at the USA:

Every Canadian city scored better than all the U.S. cities surveyed.

I generally don’t like America-bashing (especially by Canadians, for whom it’s more “me too!” than expressing valid grudges), but I figure that since I put up with years of “USA is the greatest country in the world rah rah!” I can relax that a little.

Laura and I are watching To Serve and Protect, the Canadian version of COPS. When compared against its southern counterpart, it’s comically dull. There’s no wrestling, tasering, or footchases. It’s basically just cops (in mustaches) picking up drunks and pot smokers. And everyone (the busted and the busters) is polite with each other.

Seven months ago, Laura and I sold our house in one of the hottest housing markets in the United States and began looking to buy a house in one of the hottest housing markets in Canada. Real estate weighs heavily in our minds.

Housing prices in Calgary have climbed by a lot, especially in 2006. As people like to do, they often talked around the campfire about how prices were “overblown”, “unsustainable”, “ridiculous” etc. The news sources did a lot of that too.

Today, the Calgary Contrarian (a really good local real estage blog) had a link to this Calgary Hearlad article regarding the “third annual international survey of housing affordability.” The headline and the first 2/3 of the article had few surprises: Calgary is very unaffordable (ie: high housing prices relative to average incomes) and comparable to Toronto, Vancouver/Victoria are still way worse.

That’s not news to anybody. The real interesting part is here:

The survey says that in Canada on average citizens require only 3.2 years of annual income to purchase a home, the best record in the survey. Also surveyed were Australia, Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States.

Of the 159 major urban markets in six countries, 42 are affordable, 36 moderately unaffordable, 22 seriously unaffordable and 59 severely unaffordable. All the affordable markets are in North America with 35 in the United States and seven in Canada

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the increase in real estate prices is a very global phenomenon. It’s not just Calgary that has seen housing prices rise; we’ve been watching Edmonton, Red Deer, and Saskatoon too and they’ve all grown dramatically. Florida wasn’t alone in it’s increase; the whole country jumped and there were plenty of other hotspots. Britain, France, Australia, Russia and many others have had similar increases. Even Costa Rican prices have inflated. It’s everywhere.

The practical effect of this is that it doesn’t matter much where you want to live… you’ll probably be paying more than you would have five years ago. You may be able to pay less by living somewhere else, but everywhere I’ve looked at, the housing prices are quite directly correlated by the desire we have to live there (proof positive: Regina is the “most affordable” city in the study. For those unfamiliar with the city: it’s generally regarded as a craphole).

So, we’ve decided to bite the bullet and pay the high Calgary prices… and be happy about it.

Marco light-heartedly writes:

But, guys: do you think you could get me one of these? I’d really like one!

He’s referring to the bugged Canadian coins that made the news last week. Apparently, the story was unsubstantiated, and that kind of weakens the point I was going to make, but I’ll post it anyway.

A while back Canada deported a real Russian Spy. Assuming that the allegations are actually true that he was a spy working for the Russian government/security service, it raises several questions in my mind.

Why on earth would Russia base a spy in Canada? I didn’t see any indication that he was doing corporate espionage (which would be understandable), just the regular geopolitical kind. Canada certainly isn’t diplomatically hostile towards Russia, and the Canadian military isn’t any sort of threat. Political strategy has never been more open; you could probably gain as much insight into the Canadian government through public sources as you could by spying, and do so with much less risk. Access to the United States is mentioned, but it seems to me that if you want to spy on the US, you’d be better off planting someone actually inside the country. Canadians have easier access to the USA than most other foreigners, but there are still lots of restrictions and oversight; getting someone into the USA permanently is probably easier than getting someone across the border frequently. So what the heck was this guy doing here? Are they just hedging their bets?

Lots of questions; I’ll probably never have answers to most of them.

My brother Scott writes about the telephone monopoly in our home province of Saskatchewan:

The crown corporation formulated to give its customers the best service possible clearly wasn’t and now has been thrown into the world of competition.

Monopolies are based on the idea that a few people can manage a market better than multiple competing companies (at least when they’re not outright graft). The problem is that history and theory have shown that this is not the case almost all of the time. Markets are far too complex to be managed (that is, understood) by a few brains. The Wisdom of Crowds talks about this extensively. Distributed Knowledge + Self Interest usually gives better results.

Saskatchewan has been a socialist type of place for a very long time; any industry of significance (agriculture, mining, energy, telecom, insurance, medical, education) is run by a government-controlled entity (crown corporation). Alberta, the neighboring province and my current home, has a more liberal inclination, especially in the past decade or two. Alberta has had much higher prosperity than its prairie sibling for a very long time. I don’t think that you can attribute that exclusively to oil (of which Saskatchewan also has plenty); a lot of it is owed to the entrepreneurial environment that Alberta has, and which (by and large) Saskatchewan doesn’t.